The glories of crinoline; by a doctor of philosophy. DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, pseud. [James Hain Friswell (1825 -78) ]+[Elizabeth Lowe contemporary handwrittn note]. Publication Date: 1866 Condition: Very Good

Title: The glories of crinoline; by a doctor of ...

Publisher: London: Dalton & Lucy.

Publication Date: 1866

Binding: Soft cover

Book Condition: Very Good

Edition: 3rd Edition

36 printed pages of poetry in hendecasyllables or 11 syllables. Final two pages are an essay, The Fooleries of Fashion . Spotted with some foxing throughout. Enclosed folded contemporary hand-written note on printed notepaper ("With the Editor's compliments. The Queen The Ladies Newspaper) with a contemporary cutting pasted in below about this book ("This volume has attained a 3rd edition, but wherefore, we cannot conceive. It has not a single merit. There is neither fun nor philosophy in it; the rhymes are vile, and the metre or rather the violation of it, is excruciating"). 12.5 x 15.5 cm. Original grey printed wrappers. Frederick K. Borders designed the front and back panels of the printed covers & was a printmaker & Trade wood-engraver for 'Good Words' etc. & flourished 1860-89. The essay at the back, titled Fooleries of Fashion is anonymously signed About in the World (the title of some essays Friswell published in 1864 in his best-known work, The Gentle Life, which became very popular, and ran to upwards of twenty editions, in which he attacked Tennyson as a person & as a poet). Friswell's poetry was memorably savaged by Tennyson in hendecasyllables: ".Gentle Life! What a title. Here s a subject/Calls aloud for a Gentleman to handle./Handle!Who has handled it?he, the would-be poet,/Friswell, Pisswell - a liar and a twaddler/ Pisswell, Friswell -a clown beyond redemption,/ Brutal, personal, infinitely blackguard". In one of his letters Friswell refers to the satirical images in Punch of Leech's sketches of a Brighton crinoline . Elizabeth Lowe (1829 -97) was the first successful British women's periodical editor. She edited The Queen: The Ladies Newspaper and Court Chronicle for thirty years. The title became "Queen" in the 1950s before merging into "Harpers and Queen" in the UK and in time became part of British Harpers Bazaar.Lowe moved her content towards female fashion & appears to be distributing this publication, whether formally or informally with a news cutting pillorying it. Lowe seems to have been ambivalently promoting & satirising crinolines: passing on this satirical book while illustrating/promoting crinolines in her fashion pages! The cage crinoline or hoop skirt, a device that emerged in the late 1850s, consisting of a series of concentric steel hoops attached with vertical bands of tape or braid, defined the 1860s. Eliminating the need for multiple heavy petticoats to achieve fashionable wide skirts, cage crinolines allowed skirts to reach their largest circumference around 1860. Hoops were relatively affordable, creating a fashion that was worn throughout society & frequently the subject of withering ridicule as women's skirts took up ever more space on sidewalks, benches, & halls. The shape of the cage crinoline subtly changed, altering it s entire silhouett. In 1860, it was huge and dome-shaped, often measuring 12 to 15 feet in circumference, almost equally circular all the way round, the shape that defined the 1850s. By about 1862, the cage began to swing toward the back, becoming pyramid-shaped &, by 1868, it had flattened in front and most of the volume was at the back. In fact, in 1868, the crinolette, a series of a half-hoops only supporting volume at the back, was beginning to be worn. WorldCat locates only three copies worldwide of this edition (the Britiah Library, Cambridge University & Australian National University, Canberra) & none of any other edition at all! Rare in commerce with an intriguing association. Seller Inventory # 5135